My new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling which first flowered in Sandy, Oreg., in 1970 among a group of seedlings planted by me with the object of producing large flowered upright and semi-upright Oriental hybrids in shades of pink and white suited to forcing into flower out-of-season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art. The mother plant of these seedlings was a selected clone from the strain `Pink Glory` and the pollen parent was a selected form of the species Lilium nobilissimum; the cross of these distantly related lilies having been successfully accomplished by maintaining extremely high greenhouse temperatures for more than one week after pollination.
This particular seedling was selected for propagation because its flowers were characterized by an upright to semi-upright orientation, extremely large size and broad tepalled "bowl-shaped" form, and a distinctive clear pink coloration with richer magenta-rose midribs, unique among Oriental hybrid lilies. This selected seedling was asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., with such success that successive generations were produced by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants. The successive generations of this new variety demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of the selected seedling hold true, under asexual propagation, from generation to generation and appear to be firmly fixed.
This new plant has been found to possess unusually strong, stout stems with exceptionally broad leaves and in addition, the clone has been found to possess to a high degree the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness, and disease resistance. In addition, it has been found that the new plant possesses all of the desired characteristics of excellence of form, color and habit.
The new plant has also been shown to be well suited to forcing out-of-season when the bulbs are dug at the appropriate time and properly precooled. For example, late October-dug bulbs, properly precooled and potted in January, will flower under glass in western Oregon in an average of one hundred to one hundred fifteen days with no supplementary lighting and at moderate greenhouse temperatures.